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Saturday, November 8, 2008

Your mind works in mysterious ways. Once you've grasped how your mind works, you can leverage your surroundings to more efficiently accomplish your goals. Your mind is broken up into two realms: the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. If you can understand both of these states of mind, you can accomplish your wildest dreams.

Conscious MindYour conscious mind is your way of interacting with your environment. Your everyday tasks, emotions, attitudes, and personality all originate from your consciousness. If you pictured your mind as a computer, this state of mind is what is being outputted to the computer screen. This state of mind is very basic, in the sense that it is limited to the here and now. Your conscious mind lacks the ability and the need to travel beyond your current moment and environment. The present time is all that this state of mind is concerned with. It is crafted to insure that you are in a safe and comfortable environment. One could say that our basic instincts lie within our conscious mind.

Subconscious MindYour subconscious mind is where all of the magic happens. This state of mind is not limited to the here and now. Your memory, imagination, and daydreams originate from the subconsciousness. This state of mind is always running in the background. Continuing the computer analogy, this state of mind represents the memory, the processor, and whatever else your computer needs to make it run. Your subconsciousness is constantly recalling information for your consciousness. It is the link between your present state of mind and your memory. The key point to bring up here is that your memory is always fuzzy. For most people, your memory is not exact. Your subconscious adds its own flavor to the recipe, making your memory unique to only you. 20 people can attend the same event, and afterward each would recall the event differently from their own perspective. All of us have lived separate lives, so how we feel about the objects in our environment are different to each of us. While one person watching a TV show about cars might be recalling things he learned in engineering school, another might be recalling his childhood afternoons with his father in their garage.

I say the subconsciousness is where the magic happens, because your subconscious mind can be manipulated. You can corrupt the files in your mind to make your memory, and therefore your future outcome, more desirable. While, you may have never ridden in a fancy car, you can manipulate your subconsciousness into "believing" that you have. If you were to take a picture of yourself in a fancy car, and flood your mind with that picture, by looking at it every hour, your subconsciousness will store that picture in your memory banks; therefore providing a concrete link between that picture and your conscious mind. Your conscious mind, the master of your here and now, will calculate a way to make that picture true. Your consciousness, however, is a slave to your subconsciousness. It simply, and will always, do whatever it is that your subconsciousness asks of it. Once again, your environment is a slave to your consciousness, while your consciousness is a slave to your subconsciousness. Once you fully understand these relationships, your wildest dreams can come true.

Here are some ways of manipulating your subconsciousness:1. Pictures: A picture is worth a thousand words. Your subconsciousness is tough to crack. For the average person, I'd say the best way to set your goals is with pictures. Find a way to get pictures of yourself doing the things that you want to be doing. If you want to be a professional horseback jockey, get a picture of yourself on a horse. Your subconsciousness can derive a thousand different feelings from a picture, and this is a lot more powerful than words.2. Dream Board: A dream board is a collage of pictures and inspiring words that you relate to your dreams. Your dream board can consist of a mansion, an expensive car, or maybe even a picture of a college degree. Whatever it is that you dream of, you can put on a dream board, to stimulate your subconsciousness. 3. Association: Another trick of your subconsciousness, is that it is continually trying to become more like the people in your life. It's your minds way of taking the easy way out, and it happens all of the time. You can manipulate your subconsciousness by surrounding yourself with people that you want to be more like. If you want to accomplish more goals, surround yourself with people that accomplish their goals. Look at your surroundings now. More times than not, you are surrounded by people with similar backgrounds and lifestyles as yourself. You won't find a successful doctor, whose 5 closest friends are janitors. Never underestimate that power of association. 4. Repetition: All goal setting and subconscious manipulation involves repetition. Find ways of repeating your goals over and over in your head. Tape a dollar bill over your bed, so you repeat your goal in the morning and at night. Put a rubber band around your finger to remind you. Post post-its throughout your house. Just find a way to repeat your goals to yourself over and over.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

I opened up an eTrade account yesterday, and I really don't know where to start. I've been boggled down at work for a couple of weeks, so I really haven't dived into stocks the way that I had planned. I've always been interested in stocks, but now is the first time that I've really attempted to do it. And now that I have a legitimate vehicle of transferring money into the stock market, I'm a little nervous about offering my savings. I have been so stiff on the subject of saving, that my savings have become extremely precious to me. So much so, that I've crafted a budgeting plan, in lue of touching my savings. Like my savings, I will be transferring a small amount of funds every other week from my paycheck into my eTrade account.

I think that it is a little dangerous to be scared either way. One of the things that I have realized about making money, is you cannot be attached to the money that you decide to invest. Purchasing real estate, you can't be emotionally attached to your investment properties, and I think that with stocks, you can't be emotionally attached to the money that you choose to put in. I think that it is dangerous in the long run. Suppose you lost all that you put in the first time you ever invested; being emotionally attached to that investment, you may never put money into stocks again.

So, one of the first things that I've noticed about my initial step into stock investments was that fear. Hopefully, after a couple of months (or maybe years) that fear will subside. Now all I have to do is figure out where I'm going to invest. The stock market hasn't exactly looked like a good place to be as of late.